


The Pain of Memory

by kelex



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-05
Updated: 2014-03-05
Packaged: 2018-01-14 16:47:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1273798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kelex/pseuds/kelex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rose finds out firsthand how painful some of the Doctor's memories actually are</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Pain of Memory

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers: _Day of the Doctor_ , _The Parting of the Ways_ , _Doomsday_ , _The End of Time_
> 
> "memory" was a one-word prompt from Oxoniensis' Porn Battle. I used it for inspiration.

Gallifrey, Arcadia, no more. Daleks, Time War.

Rose didn't know what most of it meant, not really. She knew what a Dalek was, of course, and had heard the Doctor mention "the Time War" in very loose and non-specific terms, knew it was between the Daleks and the Doctor's people, the Time Lords.

But Gallifrey, Arcadia, no more? They were words, strange words that rattled around in her head, and they weren't even her words.

\---

After the Dalek, after the Satellite and the Jagrafess, they had both needed a break. And so the Doctor had taken the TARDIS to Vauxhall, a garden planet--a garden that spread over the entire planet--designed to echo London's 17th century pleasure gardens.

They had spent hours on the paths together, walking among the flowers and greenery. Sometimes they talked, but mostly they were quiet. The Doctor worked his magic with the sonic screwdriver, and the money machine had spewed out coins. Rose had all the coins scooped into a leather pouch, tucked away in her jacket pocket. 

The people behind the gardens had even kept old London coins, pence and shillings and half-pennies. So far, they'd had afternoon tea, Rose had had a soft drink, and the Doctor had a pocketful of jelly babies and penny candy.

They'd tipped an acrobat, a torch-juggler, and bought two dances from a fiddle-player.

Their biggest expenditure had been ten shillings to enter a hedge maze. At the center had been a "mage" who offered wisdom for a donation. 

Rose had dropped her coin into the old man's box, and he'd offered her an apple. As soon as she'd taken it, the apple turned into a dove and flew to perch on the man's shoulder. "Explore every horizon available to you; complacency is the beginning of a slow death to a wise mind."

At Rose's cajoling, the Doctor dropped a coin as well. The mage studied the Doctor, and offered no magic tricks. "No matter how hard you try to hide the past, it will come back to haunt you when you want it least. Accept what is offered to you, and you may survive." A puff of smoke, and the mage was gone. When the smoke cleared, Rose and the Doctor were face-to-face.

Hand in hand, they found their way out of the hedge maze. Neither spoke about their fortunes, but Rose couldn't stop thinking about both of them. They were linked, in a way--the Doctor was obviously the key to expanding her horizons, and though she knew little of his past, she would do anything to help him through whatever haunted him. 

When they came to a psychic's tent, Rose again cajoled and pleaded with the Doctor until he gave in. That's where the trouble began.

"Come in, my dears." The psychic called herself Cassie, and it was announced on a large tapestry behind her chair. The Doctor assumed it was a nod to the Greek prophetess Cassandra. "Come in and make yourself comfortable, Doctor. Miss Tyler, welcome!"

Rose and the Doctor exchanged a long look--neither of them had given their names. Apparently, Cassie was the real deal. 

"Of course I'm legitimate," scolded the psychic. "You think I'm just some charlatan they hired to collect a handful of shilling coins?"

The Doctor beamed suddenly, turning the grin first on Rose and then the psychic. "You're not going to be disappointed."

He led Rose to the squashy purple armchair across from Cassie, and sat off to the side himself, situated on a big comfy pouf of blue beanbag. "Don't think that's going to get you out of this, Doctor," Cassie said imperiously, then gave Rose a kindly smile. "Ask me anything you like, dearie. Or shall I just tell you what I've picked up?"

Rose flushed a deep red, and laughed. "No ma'am. I think I better ask."

"Go ahead then, but one thing first: that one question you'll never ask, the answer is yes, obviously." Cassie folded her hands on the table. A crystal ball and a pack of Tarot cards sat on a glittering purple table runner. 

Offhand, even as he marveled at the tackiness of the décor, the Doctor wondered what the question was that Rose would never ask, and nearly jumped off his beanbag when Cassie's voice sounded inside his head. _You know what the question is, Doctor, but you'll never answer it. Not even in the fire of a dying sun._

Rose put her hands flat on the table, unaware of the interplay between the Doctor and Cassie. "I just don't know what to ask." 

Cassie smiled. "But I know what you want." Somehow, her eyes managed to flicker over to the Doctor without moving from Rose's face. She took Rose's hand, and reached for the Doctor with the other. 

At Rose's imploring glance, the Doctor put his hand in the psychic's outstretched palm.

All three jolted in place as Cassie became an unwilling conduit, linking Rose and the Doctor together. Not for long, less than a second, because as soon as the Doctor realized what was going on, he dropped Cassie's hand and broke the connection.

The psychic looked shell-shocked as the Doctor stumbled back, and she dropped Rose's hand. 

"Rose?" The Doctor touched her face, stroked her hair. "You all right, Rose?"

Rose shook her head, dizzy. "What the hell was that?"

"Come on, we're leaving." The Doctor took both Rose's hands and pulled her onto her feet. Once up, he steadied her with an arm around her shoulders. 

"You'll be the death of her, Doctor!" The psychic couldn't pull herself out of the chair--her energy was gone. But she still had the breath to shout. "When the Daleks come, she will burn for you! When the ghosts walk, she will walk to her death because of you!" Her screams followed them out.

"Doctor, you've got to go back in there and help her," Rose said as soon as they were outside.

"No," was the Doctor's answer, and he meant it. "Got to make sure you're all right first." He kept the steadying arm around her, kept her tucked close and safe against his side. 

Even though there was much more to see, the Doctor negotiated them through the garden and directly back to the TARDIS. By the time they arrived, Rose was walking on her own, and she was even able to unlock the doors. 

The Doctor followed Rose, expecting her to go to her bedroom, but to his surprise she headed for the infirmary. It wasn't much, basically a glorified medicine cabinet with paracetamol and Band-Aids.

"You really all right? Some of the things up here…" he trailed the thought off and tapped the side of his head. 

Rose nodded. "I'm fine, really. Just a bit of a headache, that's all." She went straight for the cabinet and shook out two paracetamol tablets. "What happened back there?"

"Don't know for sure, but looks like Cassie was a real psychic. A fair number of races have it, and when she looked out at both of us, she linked the two of us together, with herself as the conduit," explained the Doctor. 

"It felt… strange, like someone was trying to cram a lifetime of memory inside my head, on top of what's already in there." Rose rubbed her temples. 

_More like nine lives,_ he thought, but didn't say it aloud. Instead he asked, "You sure you're okay? Remember everything you ought?"

Rose suddenly grinned. "Well, I do remember you're a cheap date. I had to buy your chips!"

The Doctor smiled in answer, and pointed to the door. "Go to your room, Missy."

She left, but peeked back around the door frame. "Maybe you better check your own head, Doctor, cause my name isn't Missy," she teased.

"Rose!"

\---

It was only after Rose woke up from a good night's sleep that she realized there were thoughts in her head that weren't her own. 

It was strange; it was almost like Rose knew it wasn't a thought of her own, but she didn't really notice it was there unless she actively thought about it. Part of it was a side effect of traveling with the Doctor; she ran across tons of alien words and concepts and another alien word was no big deal. 

Except that it quite obviously was. Raxacoricofallapatorius, that was no big deal. But Gallifrey, that word seemed to _resonate_ in Rose's mind, like a reverberating crystal struck by lightning. It had weight to it, importance, fear. Sorrow. So many feelings not her own, yet she felt them all, attached to a word that wasn't hers. 

And then another word surfaced: Arcadia. Impressions of weight, again, but also horror. Hatred, self-loathing so strong it almost choked her. And fire. Whenever that word, Arcadia, skipped across her synapses, she thought of fire. 

She had a suspicion; after they'd watched the Earth explode in the year five billion, he'd said something to her. _"My planet's gone. It's dead, burned, like the Earth. It's just rocks and dust, before it's time."_ And when she'd asked why, what happened, _"There was a war, and we lost."_ And lastly, something she'd never forget. _"I'm a Time Lord. I'm the last of the Time Lords. They're all gone; I'm the only survivor. I'm left traveling on my own cause there's no one else."_

She suspected that Arcadia was his home planet. The rage, the hints of fire, knowing the Doctor's planet had been burned out of the sky. Maybe Gallifrey was someone he'd left behind, someone who had died in the fire. Mother? Sister? Wife? 

She didn't have the courage to ask.

The next night, Rose jerked awake in darkness. Her heart was pounding like a jackhammer in her chest, and her shouts of "No more, no more!" were still ringing in her ears. Then she heard a frantic beating at her bedroom door, and the Doctor was shouting her name. 

"I'm all right!" she called out, unsteadily making her way to the door and unlocking it. 

The Doctor nearly fell across the threshold as he engulfed Rose in his arms. "Are you all right? I heard you yelling and the door was deadlocked." For privacy, but he was starting to rethink that policy. 

Rose grabbed onto the Doctor's jacket, clutching him and grounding herself in the post-nightmare fuzziness. "What does it mean, Doctor? _No more._? Why do I feel such--such _dread_ , such hopelessness when I say those words?" And even as she said them, a shudder passed through her entire being. 

The Doctor stiffened at the question, and carefully guided Rose back to sit on the edge of her bed. "I don't know," he finally answered, because it wasn't anything he was prepared to acknowledge, or discuss.

"What about Arcadia? And Gallifrey? They're your thoughts, your words filling up my brain until I can't think of nothing else! No more, Doctor, _NO MORE._!"

He flinched at her scream of those words, and her voice was almost drowned out by the whine of the energy cannon drilling those very words into Arcadia's city wall. But he couldn't bring himself to speak to Rose of the horrors in his past.

But Rose was ruthless, and perhaps she'd gotten that from the Doctor's mind as well. "I got some of it. Arcadia, with the fire, that's your planet, right?"

The Doctor's head snapped up at the mention of Arcadia. His eyes were fierce, glassy with pent-up emotion and his voice trembled. "What do you know of Arcadia?"

"I don't know! It's a word, your word, floating around in my head! I think it, and I feel… things," Rose choked out, near tears. "And fire, fire is associated with Arcadia so I know--"

"Arcadia was supposed to be safe," the Doctor said quietly. "The fall of Arcadia was the end of the Time War. After Arcadia fell… everything burned." A sigh that was very nearly a sob. "It was the safest place on Gallifrey and the Daleks destroyed it like it was defenseless."

It was Rose's turn to comfort the Doctor, and he held her in silence for many long minutes. What he'd done, he'd never be able to live with, and it was something he could never tell Rose about. He was forever crippled by the memory and fought to shove it all back down and get a smile on his face. 

He failed, utterly, and that frightened Rose more than anything else. "I'm sorry, Doctor, I'm so sorry."

The Doctor still didn't respond, because there was honestly nothing he could say. He just stayed quiet, leaning against Rose and listening to her heartbeat. 

When her breathing and heart rate indicated sleep, the Doctor slipped out of Rose's embrace. He eased her down onto the pillows, then spread his fingers out on either temple. Closing his eyes, he let himself drift into Rose's thoughts. He had to reassure himself that her mind was undamaged. 

But he didn't trust himself not to rip the thoughts of Gallifrey and Arcadia out of her mind, so he quickly dropped his hands from her face. After a moment, he brought them back up and insinuated himself into her dream. They were in the chip shop, sharing a plate of chips, and Rose had a smudge of grease on her lip. They were laughing, and Rose was trying to feed him. He crunched through the forkful, then caught her wrist. "I love you, Rose."

He took his hands away from her face after that, and left her bedroom with the taste of greasy chips still on his tongue.

End


End file.
